Little Friends
by Degby
Summary: An AU story where Little Belle and Little Rumple meet in kindergarten. Little Rumple thinks back on his life and adventures up to this point, living with his feckless father Malcolm in a broken down house, finding a friend and guardian in the most unlikely of all places. Separation, rescue and redemption.
1. Chapter 1

Little Friends

"Can I play?" asked Belle softly.

"Sorry," said a snooty little girl with shiny black hair who really didn't seem sorry at all. "Only three can go on the computer."

"Oh," said Belle and walked away.

"Can I play?" Belle asked the boy and girl in the playhouse. They looked similar, like twins.

"No!" They shook their heads. "This house is for twins only!" Belle furrowed her brow. She really didn't think that could be possible as they seemed the only twins in the class.

She went to the water play area, but the boys playing with the boats there just splashed her when she got close enough to ask. Maybe she'd pass.

Then Belle noticed the library corner. It was quiet and deserted. Perfect. No one to splash her. No one to tell her she couldn't play.

Belle chose a book of fairy tale stories, then went to sit down on the multicoloured cushions piled up in a pyramid beneath the bookcase in the library corner. She was getting good at reading now, almost as good as a grown up, she thought proudly. Her Dad even said so. At home she had an entire shelf of Dr. Seuss books that she could read all by herself.

She sat down on the nice blue cushion at the very top of the pile.

"Ooch!" piped up the cushion. Belle sprang up from the cushion in alarm.

"Who- who's there?" she cried.

A little boy's head popped up from under the pile, causing a few of the cushions from the top to tumble down. He had very large brown eyes and a mop of brown hair and looked rather frightened.

"What's your name?" asked Belle more softly, worried she'd scare him away.

"R-Rumple," said the little boy.

"Hi Rumple," said Belle. "I'm Belle."

"Hi," he said softly.

"What are you doing under all the pillows?" asked Belle.

"Hiding," said Rumple.

"Like hide and go seek?" asked Belle.

"Sorta," mumbled Rumple. "Whatcha doing?"

"Reading," replied Belle, somewhat smugly. "I can read all by myself. Can you?"

"Uh-huh," Rumple nodded, knocking another cushion down the pile.

"Really?" asked Belle, impressed. She hadn't met another child her own age yet who could read. Maybe he wasn't telling the truth. "What's your favourite book?" she quizzed him.

"Cat in the Hat," said Rumple quickly.

"Mine too!" exclaimed Belle.

Suddenly, Rumple popped back down into his mountain of cushions and a second later came back up holding something in his hand.

Belle looked. It was "the Cat in the Hat."

"Here," he said softly and held it out to her. "If you're looking for it, I don't need it. I have 'Green Eggs and Ham' down here, too."

"Thank you," said Belle as she took the book. "Do- do you want to read it together?" she asked nervously.

"Okay," whispered Rumple, without moving out from inside his mound of cushions.

Belle picked up the blue cushion she'd originally coveted and sat down. She pulled a maroon cushion up beside the blue one for Rumple. "Come here, sit with me," she said and patted the free cushion.

"B-but my castle!" Rumple said to Belle, indicating the mound of cushions around him. "It'll get wrecked!"

But Belle wasn't looking at him anymore. She was already reading the book, fully immersed in the story.

Rumple watched her read. He was impressed. She didn't even have to move her lips. He noticed she smiled a lot. She had on a pretty blue dress. Her hair was brown like his. She looked nice. She wouldn't make fun of him, he was sure. He wanted wanted _wanted_ to go sit there beside her! So gathering up all his courage, he took big gulp of air and crawled out from under his castle of cushions, to sit beside her.

She smiled up at him as he plopped down beside her on the cushion.

He gave her a little smile back. "Hey," he said and did a shy little wave.

"Hi," said Belle. Then her eyes went big as she glanced down and saw the cast on his leg. "Did you break your leg?"

"Sorta," he said, blushing furiously.

"Sorta?" she asked him curiously.

"A long time ago," he half-whispered. "Only it never got fixed then, so they have to fix it with operations now."

"Oh," said Belle, nodding sagely. She knew about operations. That's why her mum was in the hospital and she couldn't see her all the time. Her dad said she was still recovering. That's why they had to move here, to be close to the special hospital her mum was at. That's why she had to start this new school in the middle of the year and stay in the little apartment that didn't have a nice backyard. Belle thought about her old school and her old house. Her dad said they'd be back there by the summer, when the doctors said her mum was better and they could all go home and be a proper family again. Sometimes, when Belle felt sad, she wondered if it was really true, if things would really be back to the way they were again. Sometimes it just felt like one of those things grown-ups tell little kids, to make them less scared.

"I still don't walk good yet," confessed the little boy. "That's why Mummy Kate takes me in the stroller—not because I'm a baby. So don't listen if they say that because it's not true. I'm older'n all of 'em anyway."

"Really?" asked Belle. "How old are you?"

Rumple blushed. He really didn't want to tell Belle he was all of six, almost seven years old and still in kindergarten. Not to mention still one of the smallest in the class. She'd think it was too weird. But maybe if he made up a really high number, maybe then she'd be suitably impressed. He thought of the biggest number he could think of. "I'm three hundred!" he said quickly.

"Wow!" said Belle. "That is really really really old."

"Yes," said Rumple importantly. "Mummy Chris says I am 'ever so mature.'"

Belle giggled as Rumple imitated a very proper woman's accent. "You're funny," she said.

"Thank you," said Rumple and blushed bright red.

"Now come on," said Belle, "you havta listen to me read now. I'll read and you listen and then you can read and I'll listen, deal?"

"Deal," said Rumple.

"The sun did not shine it was too wet to play, so we sat in the house all that cold, cold wet day…" began Belle.


	2. Chapter 2

On the Bench a Week Before

Every day at recess Rumple sat on a bench near where the teachers stood on a little rise of grass by the playground, so they could supervise the other children at play.

Recess was his favourite time of day. It was the one time nobody tried to get him to do anything or "participate" in various annoying classroom activities. Sometimes the teachers on duty would attempt conversation with him and he would talk with them. When he knew lots of other kids weren't watching or listening he found he could talk to grown-ups who weren't his foster mums without so much trepidation.

Sometimes another child would get in trouble and be "benched." This was the worst for Rumple, because usually said child would be of the noisy, bullying variety, pulled off the playground for pushing other kids or taunting them. In those circumstances Rumple would go to the very edge of the bench and sit quietly trying to fade into the wood, so the other child didn't notice him or think him worthy of interest. With other teachers in close proximity and the bully's buddies not around to impress, the other child usually would be fairly cordial, but still Rumple was scared.

Even the most polite child would get bored and begin to ask him questions. Why did he sit on the bench every recess, for example? Once they found out it wasn't because he was extra bad, they started asking about his injury, his accent, and how come they so rarely saw him at school. All of these topics, even the most seemingly innocuous ones, brought bad memories the small boy didn't want to think about. He was always glad when the other child was released from being benched and allowed back on the playground again. None of the punished children bothered to stick around to play after being released, which he was more than fine with. Yes, he was more than happy to be benched indefinitely, as long as he didn't have to deal with them, he told himself firmly.

Only, that wasn't really true, was it? As much as the other children's presence discomforted him, playing alone all the time could grow rather tedious.

He made faint motor sounds under his breath as he pushed a toy car along the wood slates of the bench, pretending it was a race track.

Suddenly, there was movement out of the corner of his eye and a sound like "ooF!" and before he knew it someone had sat himself down on the bench, causing his toy car to fall down into the crack between the slats.

Rumple looked up, eyes large, feeling angry at the newcomer's carelessness. Now he would have to crawl under the bench to find it, not an easy thing for him to do without getting dirty and he hated being dirty.

"Ooops," said the smiling boy sitting opposite him. "Didn't mean to. Let me get that for ya,"

The new boy scampered off underneath the bench and emerged with the red toy car which he handed back to Rumple.

Rumple took the car without saying thanks and resumed playing, trying to pretend the other boy wasn't there.

"My name's Victor," said the blonde haired boy without being asked. "I'm in grade 2! I like Pokemon! And making inventions! I haven't been naughty! I'm here because I broke my elbow. I was going up the slide the wrong way with Ruby and then it was slippery and she got in my way and nudged me off by mistake and I fell off. Okay, maybe we were being kind of naughty after all," he shrugged with one shoulder. "My brother Gerhardt is in the cadets, did you know that? I want to be in the cadets when I'm older. Wanna lookit my cast?" He unzipped his windbreaker, without waiting for Rumple's assent and showed off his cast underneath. It was neon blue and made his arm look like a big letter "L." It went from his hand up to his armpit and looked twice the size of his other arm. "They said I can get it off in six weeks! So, what happened to you?"

Rumple looked warily at the other boy. It appeared Victor wouldn't be leaving any time soon.


	3. Chapter 3

Rumple stared at the tall, blonde haired boy with dismayed, impatiently shifting from foot to foot as he stood on the bench. He never seemed to stay in one place for very long. Rumple found him a little frightening. He calculated that if Victor was in grade two they were probably around the same age, but Rumple still looked like he belonged in kindergarten.

He didn't really belong in kindergarten though, he was just there because he'd never been to school before the past month. He'd never been around other children much. He noticed they tended to be unpredictable. School was strange. Everyone there seemed to know a lot about things he knew nothing about like, how to ask to go the washroom and when to wash your hands and what circle time was. Then there were the things he knew lots about that even the teachers seemed to be ignorant of.

"So what happened to you?" repeated Victor.

"I dunno," mumbled Rumple.

Victor scratched his head and looked confused.

"You don't know?"

Rumple turned away and pretended to play with his car. There were no cushions to hide in and he was all exposed sitting out on the bench like he was. He wanted desperately to run away, from Victor and his blasted curiosity but he couldn't.

He never ever told people want happened to him. Not even the people at the agency or Mummy Kate or Mummy Chris. It was hard to explain and there were parts he didn't understand, didn't have proper words for. It was so much easier just to mumble "I dunno" or "I forget."

But he hadn't forgotten. He still remembered. He still dreamed about it sometimes too, although not exactly like it happened. Versions of it.

He remembered living in the big old, broken down house with his father and all those other people. It wasn't a nice house. The toilet stunk and was broken half the time and it was very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer and he was always hungry. Everything smelled bad and was dirty in the big old house, including Rumple himself. Only Astrid ever bathed him, and that was only when she remembered and wasn't all sleepy from her "medicine." The adults, (and there were only adults, no other children), acted strange a lot of the time, except he didn't realize it, because that's how everybody around him was acting, including his dad.

Only just last week did it finally click in his head what kind of house he'd lived in with his dad all those years. It happened after he saw a snippet of the news that Mummy Kate was watching one day and there was a picture of a house like his old home, boarded up and broken windows, a sagging porch, peeling paint and an overgrown front yard. The police were taking people out of the house with handcuffs and the woman on the news program was saying something about a "crack house."

That was it, he realized then. He'd lived with his dad in a "crack house." That was why they had to take him away. Suddenly, he felt ashamed and terrified that someone at school might find out.

There were stairs in the house, he remembered, leading up to the room he sometimes shared with his father where he kept his toys. He had a lot less toys back then, but he remembered them all. He had a plastic dump truck with a red cab and a yellow back part and a few action figures, Rafael from Ninja Turtles and Spiderman. He liked to put Rafael and Spiderman in the dump truck and drive them around the house, up and down the stairs and into the rooms to explore around the other people's things when they were out. He was often alone and Rafael and Spiderman kept him company. He was good at pretending and making up stories for all of them, so he never felt too lonely or bored.

One time he was playing with his action figure friends on the stairs and Spiderman fell off the back of the dump truck. As Spiderman went tumbling off over the bannister, Rumple leaned over to catch him. Unfortunately, the wooden of the bannister was old and rotten. As Rumple leaned his full weight against it, the old bannister cracked and gave way, pitching the small boy along with it over the side. He landed on his right leg amidst a scattering of wood on the floor below.

At first he was too shocked to cry and then he couldn't stop crying. It hurt _a lot_, more than anything else he could ever remembered. Still, he remembered the worst of it was the fear he felt as soon as he realized what would happen when his father came home and saw the mess. However, Rumple knew how to protect himself. The only other person at home was passed out on the living room couch with a needle and hadn't woken up even from the sound of the bannister cracking right beside him. All Rumple had to do was pretend he had nothing to do with the mess and to do that he had to get as far away from it as possible so his father wouldn't associate him with it.

Rumple looked at the steps up to his room. They seemed so high and steep all of a sudden. Slowly, slowly, trying carefully to keep his hurt leg off the ground he dragged himself up to the second floor. It took him a long time but eventually he made his way to the bathroom. He ran the water and washed all the blood away and got some band-aids from a box and put them on. He thought that would make it all better, but his leg still hurt horribly when he walked on it, so much so that he saw black dots and stars in front of his eyes and felt like he was going to fall down when he touched his foot to the floor. It was a very disturbing sensation. He noticed his leg seemed to be bent funny too. He felt his stomach sink in his belly, because there was no way his father wouldn't notice _that_, but he knew he had to keep going. He crawled down the hall to the room he shared with his father and lay down on the mattress on the floor and pulled up all the blankets around him so that when his father came home he wouldn't notice what had happened. Hopefully, he'd be in one of those moods where he took medicine and fell right to sleep as soon as he hit the mattress.

Rumple thought miserably that he wished he had some medicine right now to make the pain in his leg and buttocks go away, but as long as he didn't move in certain ways he seemed to be okay. Maybe if one of the others came around they'd give him some if he asked nicely. The thought calmed him and he fell asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

"What's your name?" persisted Victor, undaunted, determined to break through the smaller boy's silence. "My name's Victor!"

"I know," said the smaller boy, in irritation. "You already told me."

"So you _can_ talk!" grinned Victor.

"Oh course I can talk," frowned Rumple, "and anyways, my name's Rumple."

"Can I see your Hot Wheels car?" asked Victor.

Holding his car close to his body, Rumple studied Victor carefully. Victor didn't look like a thief, but if life had taught Rumple anything, it was that you could never be too sure. He knew if Victor took his toy and ran away with it, he'd never be able to get it back.

"Do you want to play with my Ninjago?" suggested Victor, popping the Lego toy out of his pocket.

Rumple eyed the Ninjago with interest. He'd never played with one before. It looked exciting. "How about a deal?" he suggested brazenly.

Victor perked up.

"We exchange toys for this recess, but you have to gimme my car back at indoors time, okay?"

"Sure," said Victor and the two boys traded toys. "Just be careful with it, all right?"

Rumple nodded. He was always careful, ever since he fell down the stairs when he was five.

He remembered that he'd been able to hide what happened from his father for several days. Malcolm had been on a bender and oblivious to everything. Rumple simply told his father he felt ill and wanted to stay in bed with the covers over him. Malcolm had accepted it, leaving him some juice and cereal and cold pizza to eat and the TV on to keep him entertained. Sometimes his father could be surprisingly generous. There were moments when Rumple could see how bad his dad felt for how things had turned out with their little family after Rumple's mother died. Sometimes he got maudlin and talked to Rumple about her, but try as he might little Rumple couldn't remember her. He only knew her face from the pictures in the little album his father kept tucked under his pillow. Sometimes, when his father was out, Rumple looked at it and tried to see if his face resembled hers in the mirror. It saddened him that he looked more like his father. He didn't want to be like him.

It seemed Leroy, the junkie who'd been sleeping on the couch, had been blamed for breaking the bannister by the stairs. Rumple heard them arguing about it in the kitchen below him one night. He expected Leroy to deny it, but as Leroy couldn't remember much of what had happened for the past few days, he had to admit it was possible. Rumple was secretly happy that no one thought to blame him, but then felt terribly guilty when he realized that Leroy was being forced to leave the house on account of the bannister. Sometimes he still wondered where the man had gone.

After awhile he realized he no longer had to hide in bed, only leaving once in a while to go to the bathroom. His father didn't come home for a day and Rumple needed food. He crawled downstairs and found an unopened bag of potato chips and more juice boxes. Clutching his bounty to his chest he limped off down the hall angling for the stairs, when suddenly, his father entered the house.

"Hey there Rupert," said Malcolm, (Rupert was his real name), "wassamatter with you?"

"Nothing," whispered Rumple.

"Why're you walking funny then?" asked Malcolm.

"I fell on the stairs," admitted Rumple, trembling.

"Humf, serves you right then. Teach you to be more careful next time, boy. Here, give me those chips."

"Uh-huh," nodded Rumple, regretfully handing over the chips. His stomach was grumbling. At least he was able to get away without being hit. Carefully, carefully, he crawled upstairs with the juice boxes hidden in the front pocket of his hoodie. Inside his nest of blankets on the mattress in his room he held tight to his dump truck and sucked every last drop of apple juice from the boxes.

On the TV he watched children laughing and playing outside, throwing around nerf water footballs. If he imagined very very hard he could just see himself with them, running and playing with the water footballs. He could pretend he was the strongest and fastest of all of them. In his imagination they were all his friends and he was never lonely or hungry or in pain again.

Sometimes at night his leg would hurt so badly, he'd risk waking up his father, just to get some medicine to make the hurt go away. Sometimes he was too scared to ask and just lay there, staring up at the ceiling holding his Spiderman close beside him. More than anything he wished his Spiderman was real. Rumple desperately wanted a real friend, just one, one real friend who really cared about him. If he could just have that, he thought, everything else would be all right.

He'd seen a movie once, about a little wooden boy who wished upon a star and then his wish came true. He couldn't see the stars in their little room, but he could see the streetlights outside in the night and they were kind of like stars. He wished on the streetlights night after night that the world would bring him a friend.

And then one day his wish came true.


	5. Chapter 5: Astrid

It was a rainy Saturday when Astrid first appeared in the broken down house by the river that Rumple, still called Rupert in those days, his father, and a constantly changing assortment of riff raff and junkies called home.

He knew it was a Saturday because there were cartoons on the TV and he knew it was rainy because of the tap tap tap of the raindrops on the skylight in the bedroom he shared with his father, that and his leg was hurting.

All the shows on TV were about a holiday called Halloween. Rumple gathered that it involved people dressing up as magical spooky creatures and kids going door to door collecting candy.

He had been foolish enough to ask his dad if they could go together. His father gave a short bark of a laugh and told him sure, he'd take him, if he was willing to quit playing the invalid long enough to walk up and down the street with him collecting candy. Rumple demurred.

He wasn't playing at anything. Ever since his fall downstairs he couldn't walk properly anymore. He crawled about now because it was easiest. It made him feel ashamed, like a baby. Mostly he just stayed in his room on his futon mattress on the floor in the nest of blankets and pillows he'd made for himself, protected in his nest of wool, felt and cotton, watched TV, played with his toys and slept. He ate there too, squirreling away the food he stole from the pantry when everyone was out during the day. Hiding it under the blankets so he'd have something to eat when his father was away or came home without bringing him something.

It was a sad and lonely existence. He missed those times before his father had got so heavily into the drugs when they would go out to the nearby park and play and his dad would push him on the swings and they would kick a ball around the big field together. It wasn't much but those were the best times little Rumple could remember. Although really he wasn't "little Rumple" at the time. His name was Rupert. That's what his father called him and what everyone in the house who didn't call him "kid" called him too.

The name nickname "Rumple" had come through Astrid. Everything good in his life had come through Astrid, he thought wistfully.

That rainy Saturday he'd fallen asleep, snuggled up under his comforters and blankets in front of the TV, hidden from view.

He woke up a bit and was going to poke his head out, but then he heard his father and some other grown-ups talking and laughing. He felt scared and went quiet, hiding like a mouse in his hole under the blankets where no one would notice him, hoping the other grown-ups and his father would leave soon.

He could be perfectly quiet and motionless when he wanted. It was a skill he'd long since perfected.

Then, without warning someone sat on him. He yelped and the person shot straight off his bed. "What the-?"

Much to his consternation he was hauled out from under his protective blanket-shield.

"Well, now," said a female voice. "Who's this then? Did I hurt you, sweetie?"

The little boy shook his head.

"I'm so sorry," the woman said. "I didn't realize there was a person there! It just looked like some rumpled sheets on the bed! I didn't realize you were under there! Poor little rumpled thing, look Malcolm, he's shaking like a leaf. Look at his little tatty clothes," she said, pulling at his torn cardigan. "I wonder whose he is."

"Pssh, that's just Rupert, my son," said Malcolm irritably.

Malcolm noticed Astrid's quick glance of disapproval and quickly tried to mask his dislike for his son.

Gently, Astrid picked the little boy up and sat him in her lap.

She sniffed his hair and made a face.

"Uh, Malcolm, you might want to bath him once in a while."

Rupert, "the little rumpled thing" looked up at Astrid with eyes, overlarge in his small peaked face.

Astrid smiled gently down at him. He noticed she had golden sparkles on her eyelids and her cheeks were round and pink. Her hair was pink too and her clothes were bright and colourful. She was without a doubt the most beautiful, colourful person he'd ever seen. Maybe she was magical, like the fairies in that cartoon he watched on TV, he thought.

"That's just Rupert's pathetic act. Don't get taken in by him. He just does it to get attention," his father dismissed him. "You wait and see, it'll get tiresome for you too in a bit. Always pretending his leg hurts and whining that he's sick. Spends all day lazing around playing with that stupid Spiderman toy and watching TV. Weird kid. Barely even talks. Think he's not right in the head maybe."

Malcolm shrugged his big shoulders. "Now when I was that age I was outside all the time, running around playing football, getting into scrapes. Modern childhood. Feh!" Malcolm snorted.

This was so unjust that Rumple began to cry, soft, nearly silent sobs, his narrow shoulders shaking.

Malcolm rolled his eyes in disgust. "Right, I'll be downstairs. Come join me when you're bored over the little actress over here."

Then Malcolm went downstairs and Astrid and the little boy were left alone.

Rumple reached out to touch her pink hair to see if it was real. It was! He gasped in delight and she laughed, a pretty tinkling sort of laugh.

"Are- are you fairy?" he asked her hoarsely. He was so unaccustomed to talking that he forgot the "a" before "fairy" and his voice was barely audible.

"What 's that?" she asked encouragingly.

"Are you a fairy?" he asked, willing his small voice to be stronger.

This question brought a new peal of laughter from the visitor and she gave him a gentle squeeze. "Oh you are just the cutest little rumply thing ever!" she said. "I'm so glad I came here! I just know we are going to be super best friends!"

Rumple, for that's how he'd now been transformed by her, grinned back up at her. A friend at last! A real friend!

"Now come on! I think it's time you had a bath. Get that cute little face of yours squeaky clean, yeah? Trust, me, your dad won't even recognize his little boy when we're done! I'll give you a haircut too. You know I used to be a hairdresser when I lived in me old place. I still have my old barber scissors too. You'll look smashing, wait and see!"

Then Astrid got up and began to pad out of the room, clearly expecting Rumple to follow.

Desperate not to let her out of his sight and seeing no other alternative he crawled after her. She turned back to see him on the floor and her eyebrows bunched together with worry.

"Why are you crawling? Can't you walk none?" she asked him.

Rumple just shook his head, thinking she was going to make fun of him like some of the other denizens of the house, like his father.

"Oh well, that's alright," she said and before he knew it, he'd been hoisted up by his armpits . "There! You're not heavy at all!"

After that Astrid drew the tub. Much as Rumple hated to take off his clothes, he was willing to do it for her. And when he sat in the tub full of warm water and Astrid squeezed a handful of orange scented shampoo onto his head, he felt wonderfully happy. His leg felt relaxed in the nice warm water and his skin felt good as she scrubbed his little body down with a washcloth. Later on she cut his hair and he laughed as all the little pieces of brown fell down all around him. She found some clean clothes for him in his dresser that he'd not known were there, too. They were only a little snug and slightly gray from washing.

"Look at you!" she crowed. "Like a brand new boy!"

When he looked at himself in the mirror and at Astrid grinning out proudly behind him he really did feel like a brand new person.

Maybe he really was brand new like Astrid. She was _magical_ after all, he thought, he was sure of it.

Could it be that his leg was all better now? He hopped down from the chair where he'd been sitting on with Astrid, trying to land with both feet.

And was instantly on the ground howling with pain. Quickly he stopped shouting, worried she would be angry or his father would come. He looked around frightened.

"Oh Sweetie," said Astrid and held him in her arms and rocked him until the pain went away. For a brief second he had a flash of memory of some warm female arms holding him like this long long ago and rocking him in a different room someplace else. A faint memory came to him of blue flowered wallpaper and was gone.

"Let's have a look, shall we?" said Astrid, in a business-like fashion.

He was frightened, but Astrid pulled up both his trouser legs anyway. "Ah well look at that," she said sadly.

And he noticed, for the first time, after what had probably been a year or more, that his right leg, the one that hurt all the time, looked smaller and skinnier than the left one and it bent to the side below his knee in an odd sort of way, that made Rumple feel sad.

"I wonder. Was you born early perhaps? I had a cousin like that back in England when I was young like that, used to wear a brace on his leg, use a stick. They'll probably fit you for one when you're a little older, so you can walk proper and get around where you like," she told him. "Didn't use to stop him none. We're none of us perfect, I guess," she said sadly and her eyes got a far away look as if she wasn't thinking about him at all when she said it, but about herself. "At least you're light, eh?" she said and picked him up on her back.

Holding onto Astrid's neck as she went down the stairs Rumple marveled at this strange new idea. She seemed to drop these pearls of hope and sunshine for him, without even trying, without even being aware of what she was doing. His father was so stingy with his gifts and affections, that this largesse of kindness amazed him.

She had been so matter of fact, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, _wear a brace, use a stick, walk proper and get around where you like_. He had no idea of what she was talking about and thought a stick was something you found on the ground that fell from a tree, but she obviously knew what she was talking about. He thought of the world outside the broken down house that he hadn't seen in what felt like forever, where his father no longer brought him because he was too slow and whiny about walking, that he thought he'd never see again.

He remembered the park with the sand pit and the slide and the swings. He wondered, was it too much to ask…

"Astrid?" he said softly as she made the bottom step and came out on the main floor.

"What's up Rumple?" she asked cheerfully.

He could see the front door from where they were standing. On the mat were his sneakers and crocs which he hadn't worn for ages.

"Could we go to the park?"

And then they did! Rumple could barely believe it. They went to the park and Astrid put him in the swing and he went back and forth up high like he was flying, soaring, touching the tops of the trees. He scrambled in the sandbox and felt the soft grains between his toes and they made castle towers together with a Styrofoam cup and Astrid taught him a funny song and made him sing it out loud. He didn't even know he could sing. She praised his voice profusely, but secretly he thought Astrid's voice was the most beautiful. "I used to be a singer, for real, " she told him in confidence. Astrid was always telling him about different jobs she'd had. It seemed to him there'd been so many.

She picked him up and made him fly around like an airplane. The only part of the day he didn't like was when he had to sit on a bench for a while, while Astrid went to talk to some guys in big puffy jackets standing beside the bleachers near the baseball diamond. They gave her paper bags and when she came back Rumple asked if it was candy and if he could have some.

"No," she said shortly. "It's not candy and I don't want to see you ever touch anything you see in a bag like this, okay? Stuff in these bags is strictly for grown-ups."

"Okay," he nodded, frightened of how her voice had suddenly gone all harsh and scary, almost like his dad's.

"Promise me, you won't ever touch one of these bags, all right?"

"Okay, I promise," he said weakly.

"Ah, there's my good little Rumples," she said and swung him up in her skinny arms. He buried his face into her perfumed shoulder and sighed with happiness.

On the way home they stopped by Macdonald's and Astrid got him a happy meal with a toy car inside and praised him for eating all his fries which she called "chips" in her funny, sing-song way of talking. He mimicked her voice back, trying to sound just like her and it made her laugh.

Things were a little different at home now, too, he noticed. He thought perhaps Astrid had had some kind of talk with his father, because Malcolm stopped calling Rumple lazy all the time.

One day, one of his father's friends was over and caught sight of Rumple crawling about and asked Malcolm gruffly what was wrong with him.

Rumple braced himself for Malcolm's usual answer saying "Rupert's just a big baby, always looking for attention, trying to make you feel sorry for him." But this time Malcolm just said, "Ah leave him be. Astrid says his leg's deformed and he ought to go to a doctor, get him fitted up for a brace or something. But you know how it is, you go to the clinic, takes all day waiting and then they just send you one to someone else, no point to it, I mean what're they going to do anyway?" he shrugged.

"What do you do with him when you take him out?" the friend asked.

"I don't," said Malcom, feeling a little guilty about it for the first time. "I just used to get angry at him, thought he was slowing me down on purpose. Maybe if I had something to push him in…" said Malcolm rubbing his chin.

And the next day Malcolm woke Rumple up early to proudly tell him that he'd nicked him a cool, special present. Not waiting for Rumple to get down the stairs on his own he picked him up on his shoulders and brought him down to see what it was.

Rumple stared. It was a stroller.

"So what'd you think?"

"Aren't those for babies?" asked Rumple, who was growing more accustomed to voicing his opinion, now that he was hanging out more with Astrid.

"Hmmmph!" scowled his father. "I try to do something nice for you and…"

"I love it Dad, I love it!" cried Rumple eagerly, wanting to appease his father.

"Yeah, well maybe Astrid can take you out in it this morning. I need to go see a friend about some medicine."

Even if he'd at first been a little leery of the stroller and thought it was for babies, Astrid quickly made him see how wrong he'd been to look down at it.

"Well done Malcolm!" Astrid cheered when Rumple tentatively showed her his father's new acquisition.

"Now you and me can go on adventures together!" Astrid told Rumple. "I can take you all over the city without your leg getting sore or my arms hurting from carrying you. Now where do you want to go first?"

"On adventures!" said Rumple because he didn't really have any idea what was out there, he only knew he wanted to see it. He tried to imagine where Astrid would take him, but as he couldn't remember much of the city other than the street they lived on with the park and the shops, he had no idea what he wanted to see, but trusted Astrid that they would have fun.

And true to her word Astrid did take him on adventures. They went all over town, to parks with real ducks in them that let him feed them, to the library, to the museum on the children go free days, to a big mall, where Astrid got lots of new clothes for him and hid them underneath his bum in the stroller so the ladies at the checkout couldn't see. They even went to a movie theatre to see "Frozen" three times because Astrid was friends with the girl at the ticket booth from her exotic dancing days.

Astrid was like a mum and a big sister and best friend all combined. She talked to him like he was smart and could understand everything she said, event though sometimes he didn't and he had to ask her to explain things to him. She never got mad at him for that. She said it was a sign that he was paying attention. He felt good about himself when he was with Astrid, because Astrid talked to him he felt like a grown up, someone who's opinion mattered, whose feelings were real.

The only two things he didn't like about her was when she took him to her friends' houses to get medicine. It was boring and he had to sit around and he hated it. Her medicine friends were scary too, he noticed, not like the friend with the sparkly blue eye shadow they talked with at the movie theatre. Then there were the times back home when Astrid and Malcolm took their medicine together. Rumple had come to hate the medicine even more now that Astrid was here. Malcolm habitually ignored him whether he took medicine or not, so Rumple didn't really notice much difference, but when Astrid took it and went from doting on him, spending time colouring with him and telling him stories that made him laugh, to being a zombie who ignored him, who barely cared if he was alive or dead. It frightened him. Even though he was really young he knew that if something happened to him while Astrid was like that, she wouldn't be there to protect him or save him. Even when Malcolm and Astrid were in the room at night with him and all three of them were together, he knew if they were on the medicine than he was really all alone. It made him scared.

When he told Astrid how it frightened him, she sobbed and told him how sorry she was and that she'd never take the weird medicine again, but invariably after a few days of fun adventures, he'd notice her getting fidgety and strange. Soon they'd be back at the park with him in the sandbox and her talking to her "friends" behind the bleachers. He wished he was big and strong and could run fast and punch, so he could take her away from the medicine and the mean looking guys in the puffy coats. But even with all her magic, Astrid, he knew, couldn't really change him into a brand new boy. It was all pretend. So he hid in the sandbox and watched the men pass her the paper bags. What else could he do?


	6. Chapter 6: Rumple's Birthday

On the morning of his seventh birthday Rumple woke up in the big bed in between Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris. It took him some time to realize where he was and then he remembered his nightmare from the night before and Mummy Chris coming to pick him up out of bed to take her to sleep with her and Kate where he felt safer.

She'd asked what the nightmare was about, but he didn't tell her. He knew better than to talk about Astrid in front of her and Mummy Kate. As much as they said they loved him and took care of him, he knew they didn't believe Astrid was real. Dr. Blau thought he'd made Astrid up, an imaginary fairy friend to help him in his loneliness and troubles in his father's house. Sometimes he wondered if they were right. The more time went by, the more he began to see that it was probably ridiculous for a boy his age to believe in fairies, especially a fairy that would push him around town in a stroller and get him to help steal stuff for her. Anyway, if she was real, where was she? Whenever he talked about her Mummy Chris and Mummy Kate got strange frowny faces. He didn't like when they frowned or their voices got tight. He was very sensitive to such signs from adults. He'd spent many years paying attention to them, warning signs for when his father or one of the grown ups at the house was about to lose their cool.

It hadn't surprised Rumple that Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris slept in the same bed together. Back in the big house he'd lived in with his father and Astrid, there weren't many beds or much space and plenty of people. Lots of people ended up sleeping together in all sorts of tangles on mattresses, sofas and beds all over the house.

He would often wake up in the morning to go to the bathroom and stumble over people sleeping in the hall in sleeping bags or passed out right in front of the door, loudly snoring, without a pillow or blanket or anything. Once in the night he dragged himself up to pee. The light in the hall was broken and they hadn't fixed it so he could only turn the light on in the bathroom. He was shocked to see a woman lying there, unconsciously snoring with her head on the toilet seat and half her straggly blonde hair in the bowl!

But the more he lived with Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris, that it wasn't for lack of beds that they slept together under the big striped comforter in their peach coloured room.

Gradually he realized that they loved each other. He wasn't terribly shocked. He knew men could be together with other men that way, from Jeff, a friend of Astrid's who used to crash at the house sometimes, who once explained to Astrid, when Rumple was in the room, exactly what he made his money to buy his junk with.

He'd invited Astrid to join him, but Rumple stared disapproving at Jeff from his nest on the mattress and the intruder had had the wisdom to leave without pressing the matter.

When Jeff was out of earshot, Rumple quickly told Astrid he didn't like her friend and thought Jeff was crazy for wanting to take her away.

"Oh he won't take me away," she promised Rumple. "No one will. You know what I told you, you little rumpled thing, we're best mates, you and me. Ain't nothing ever keeping us apart, I promise. "

Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris made him promises too. However, unlike Astrid and his father, they seemed to keep theirs.

The first time he'd eaten lunch with them at their house, he broke a teacup by dropping it. He'd never actually used one before and was clumsy with it. Terrified they'd send him back to the big house again, he began to cry. They reassured him that they didn't care, that nothing he did would make them send him back, that he was theirs forever, for real and truly.

They said the words, and he nodded, pretending to believe them, to show he was a good boy, but deep inside, at the hardened shell around the core of his being he knew it couldn't be true. They couldn't really want him. Nobody could.

The day they first took him to the doctor, when they got the news about the "growth-plate injury" to the bone in his leg that had made it stop growing properly and all the expensive operations it would require to correct, he cried all the way home in the car.

Sitting beside him in the backseat, a concerned Mummy Kate asked if he was upset because of what the doctor said about his leg.

Rumple shook his head. Why would he be upset? It hadn't surprised him. He could've told them they didn't have to go to a doctor to find out his leg didn't work right and would be expensive to fix, if it was even fixable at all. Even Astrid had said it was deformed when she saw it he remembered, and she usually tried to put as good as spin as possible on things with him.

He had been more surprised that Mummy Chris and Mummy Kate hadn't seemed to notice or comment on it when they got him. Unfortunately, now that they knew he was defective, that a doctor had told them for sure, he was certain that they'd waste no time in sending him back.

"No," he'd sobbed, truthfully, unable to contain himself any longer. "It's just that now you'll send me back, now that you know."

Mummy Kate's face nearly crumpled with sorrow when she heard this.

What had he done now, he wondered.

She put an arm gently around his narrow shoulders in the carseat. "Oh sweetie, you thought— you thought we were only keeping you because we didn't know about your poor leg?"

He nodded. It was silly, now that he thought about it. Of course, they'd noticed. He used a bloody stick after all! It was just that he wasn't used to the lack of comment on it and he couldn't figure out why. It had never occurred to him that they hadn't said anything out of_ politeness_ and sensitivity to his feelings. Thinking this way was a foreign concept to him.

"Honey, we knew all about it before we even got you. They told us at the agency. It was in your papers."

_They knew all about it!_ Rumples eyes went wide. Secretly, he wondered how much else they knew at the agency.

"Honey, it doesn't matter to us. We will never, never, NEVER take you back. You are our little boy and we love you just as you are."

There was a sound from the front of the car where Mummy Chris was driving. She had been silent through the whole exchange, but now he saw her reflection in the driver's mirror and he could see, the whole time, she'd been crying. Now she smiled through her tears and winked at him.

"She speaks for both of us," said Mummy Chris.

And Rumple nodded solemnly from his carseat, the gears in his little head spinning. They spun and they spun and they spun and then…a crack opened in the hard shell around his heart, the shell that had appeared after he lost Astrid, to protect him from everything, to keep anyone else from getting inside his heart. And for the first time since then, he began to let his someone new in.

And now it was his birthday. His last birthday when he turned six he'd been in the big broken down house with his father and Astrid and there hadn't even been breakfast to eat, let alone chocolate chip pancakes and brightly wrapped presents at the table. All these things Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris had told him to expect. They knew surprises frightened him, so they made sure he knew about things well in advance. And in the afternoon he would have a party, a real party. Just a little one they'd explained when he appeared apprehensive. They understood he didn't like being around too many people, that he got shy.

"We'll only invite three of your school friends, how about that?" said Mummy Chris. "Who do you want to come?"

This didn't sound too bad to Rumple. Three people he could manage. He told her he wanted Victor and his best friend Ruby there. Rumple actually didn't know Ruby very well. She tended to be a little boisterous for his taste, but he figured if Victor liked her and she was there, he'd be more likely to come. And most importantly of all, the real reason he actually _wanted_ to have a party…he wanted to invite Belle.

"I'm so proud of you!" Mummy Kate said. "Well done you with making new friends. I know it isn't easy for you to talk to people. "

She was right, it wasn't easy for him to talk to people or open up with just anyone. Only with Belle. Somehow he'd been able to talk to her right from the very beginning. There was something about her that made him feel like he wasn't being judged, not like he was with other kids, who took one look at him or heard about his background and thought they instantly knew what he was like without even talking to him. Belle was open to him in a way no other children in his class were. Somehow, he thought she understood him in a way that meant he didn't need to explain himself, that whatever he said she'd sympathize with it.

She was kind, too. Oh she was kind to everyone, it was true, only with him, she wasn't just kind, she connected with him, like his soul could talk to her soul. He didn't think of it exactly in those words. He didn't really have a good way to explain it, but inside he always felt like being with Belle was simply magic.

There was a show on TV that Belle liked to talk about. It was called "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic." Even though it was clearly a girls' show, he was happy to watch it with her when she came over to his house. He was happy to do anything with her really, whatever Belle wanted, just to be around her. Sometimes when he was in the tub playing with his floaty toys or rolling along in the stroller with one his mums, he liked to hum the theme song. He didn't know any of the real words except this: "Friendship is Magic."

It was, it really was.

He hadn't known about birthday cakes and what to do with them. Mummy Chris had explained that you could make a wish on your candles when you blew them out on a birthday cake.

He thought of the wish he'd made on that star, the one that was really a streetlight so long ago, when he'd felt so sad and alone—the wish that brought Astrid to him.

Magical Astrid, his first real friend. Maybe it would work again. If friendship was magic and birthday cake wishes worked as well as star ones.


	7. Chapter 7

Rumple and Mummy Kate stood outside on the back patio preparing the table for the guests while Mummy Chris finished her work on the cake inside. Together Rumple and Kate pulled the paper Buzz Lightyear table cloth over the table until it was even on both sides. Then Kate gave him the cups to set out while she took care of the plates and forks.

"There all done," Kate said. "What do you think Rum?"

"Looks great!" he said and gave her a thumbs up. "When is everybody coming?"

"Soon sweetie, soon."

"What do we do until then?"

"Want to swing?" suggested Kate.

"Sure!" exclaimed Rumple.

Kate looked over at the tire swing that hung from the big poplar tree in the backyard. It had been there with the house since she and Chris first moved in and began renting. She remembered the first day they'd arrived there, their own cozy little house for the two of them—a place all their own for the very first time. She'd looked around and felt like a real grown-up married person, like she never thought she would and she just grinned ear to ear unable to believe her good fortune, to have this wonderful person in her life and to be married and to have this lovely place to live in together. She felt mature and responsible, like a real adult for the first time in her life. Of course Chris had to go and blow it all by making a beeline for the tire swing, jumping on and shouting out to Kate to push her like a little kid. It made Kate grin just remembering.

And now there wre the three of them living here. She glanced down fondly at Rumple, the little birthday boy making his careful way down the steps from the porch. It was almost like he'd lived here with them forever, she'd grown so accustomed to him and his cute little ways.

"C'mere birthday boy!" she said and hefted him up onto her shoulder. giggled as she blew a raspberry on his bare tummy. "Look I've got a little sack of potatoes!" she said, the way she remembered her father once doing with her and deposited little Rumple on the tire swing. He giggled some more and kicked out his feet.

"Help! Help! I'm falling in the hole!" he cried dramatically, as he leaned back, still holding tight to the ropes.

"Come here silly," said Kate and pulled him up so he was sitting properly on the black rubber surface. The swing was high off the ground and his feet stuck out just above her waist. His small leg was in a lighter, shorter cast now. They'd taken the big cast off a few days before, so he no longer had to use crutches. He had a gray plastic walking boot instead, to which he'd added an entire pack's worth of bat symbol stickers Kate had bought him. (Batwoman was her favourite superhero, as she shared a first name with the main character Kate Kane).

"How's the boot?" she asked him.

"Needs more stickers."

Kate laughed. "All right, you ready to fly?"

"Yeah!"

"Whee!" she cried and gave him a push.

Just then the screen door opened and Chris poked her head out.

"Houston! We have a problem!"

"Houston? Who's Houston?" asked Rumple.

"Me, she means me," sighed Kate. "What's wrong now Chrissy?"

"The cake's not coming out of the pan!"

"Did you try digging it out with a spoon?"

"What? No, that'll just wreck it! Come on, give me a hand, you always get it out perfectly!"

"All right, all right" said Kate. "Just a second."

She prepared to pick Rumple up to take him off the swing.

"No, I just got on!" he insisted holding tightly to the ropes.

"Oh all right, but you stay put young man. I don't want you jumping down from there and hurting your foot again, all right?"

"Okay," he said.

"Just wait for me to come back to get you down, okay?"

"Uh-huh," he nodded.

Now that he no longer had to wear such a long cast, pumping on the swing was much easier, but he still couldn't make himself go very high. The tire swing was strung to a thick tree limb that was slightly uneven, making the tire list to one side and spin, a tendency it had anyway, being round, instead of going straight back and forth like the swings at the park. If you weren't careful it would bump into the tree trunk, which you could take advantage of if you wanted, by pushing off with your feet or hands to gain a little more momentum. However when Mummy Kate saw him doing it she told him not to, because of his cast. He didn't understand why. He'd bumped it loads of times by mistake already. It was made of thick plaster and wouldn't crack, but she always worried.

It was funny because it didn't even hurt him that much anymore, and back a long time ago when it truly _had_ bothered him all the time, no one really thought anything of getting him to do all sorts of things on his own. But Kate and Chris were different than his father and the people in the old house. Occasionally it annoyed him that they didn't let him do whatever he wanted, but most of the time he enjoyed being the focus for their concern and attention. In fact, he'd grown so used to have attentive adults around all the time, it unsettled him a bit to be alone for a few minutes every now and again. It was strange to him, because he remembered going for entire days without seeing another person when he was small, just scrunched up in his blanket nest in the room, eating his stored away food, waiting for his father to come home. And now when Kate left for even just a bit he got a little scared that they'd leave him like everyone else did before.

Sometimes he worried her and Chris would never come back, that they'd gotten tired of him. They tried to put him at ease, and now he could see them inside the house from his perch on the swing, Chris and Kate waving at him through the window as they tried to get the stubborn cake out of the pan.

He kicked his feet up and tried to pump again. He couldn't really fly on this swing, not like the one at the park by the old house that he went to with Astrid long ago, so he let the tire spin him round and round until he felt a little dizzy. Swings aside, he really did love Chris and Kate's backyard. The complete lack of shifty looking guys who wore coats even in warm weather was a distinct advantage to his new situation. There were no broken bottles or weird long plastic tube-thingies that you weren't supposed to touch on the ground here either. There weren't any mean big kids in the sand pit who pushed sand on you and took your toys to play keep away and monkey in the middle with—making you the monkey every time. The only kids who came to Chris and Kate's backyard were ones Rumple himself wanted there. Except for Emma and Neal who brought baby Henry sometimes, and Henry was too small to bully anyone. Actually, Rumple quite liked him. Emma and Neal even let him hold baby Henry if he was sitting down. They would be coming to the party too. Chris and Kate had even asked him if it was okay. Of course he'd said yes, proud that he got to choose who they'd have in the house. Not at all like his old house, he thought, where if given the power to choose who got to stay, he probably would've thrown everyone out except Astrid, his only friend. And now he had more friends than he could remember ever having at any time in his life.

And yet- there was still one person he wished would be there for his birthday who he knew wouldn't be coming. He was pretty sure he wouldn't have had a birthday last year if it wasn't for Astrid. His father certainly didn't get him anything. Sure, it wasn't the biggest celebration. There wasn't even any cake, yet somehow, Astrid still managed to get him the thing he really wanted. She'd needed his help of course, but they'd got it together, as good partners should and that had made it special to him.


	8. Chapter 8: Rumple, age 6

"Happy birthday to you Rumples!" sang Astrid as Rumple crawled over to her and gave her a big squeeze. He wanted to open the Spiderman car right away, but his stomach was growling. He tore the wrapper off the Snickers bar and began to scarf it down with the speed of a cookie monster. Astrid eyed it hungrily as he ate. She looked down and chewed a well worn stick of gum, determined to control herself.

When Rumple had almost finished the entire chocolate bar and felt nearly full for the first time in weeks, he noticed Astrid looking at the ground and guessed what was wrong. He took the end of the chocolate out of his mouth and handed it to Astrid.

It was soggy and sticky with his saliva when he gave it to her and the chocolate came off a bit on her fingers, but when he said, "Here Astrid, you can have the rest," her eyes went big and he thought for a minute she was going to cry.

"Part of your birthday chocolate? Are you sure?"

"Take it," he nodded. "We can share the Smarties too."

"Seriously?"

"Uh-huh."

"Sweetie, that's that's the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me," she said and her voice went surprisingly husky. "I mean it," she said and stroked his hair so lovingly he nearly purred. "You sweet sweet boy- you're just full of love aren't you? I only wish you had someone proper to love you back and take care of you like you deserve."

"I don't want someone, I just want you, cause you're magical like the fairies on TV. You were my wish and it came true," he confessed as he snuggled into her lap.

"Oh Rumples, Sweetie, I'm nobody's wish come true, trust me. If you knew more about the world and more about me, you'd know that I'm not magical, not by any stretch of the imagination."

"But you are," he persisted. "You are magical. You saved me just like pixie dust!"

Astrid laughed sadly. "I'm not magical Rumples. I'm not anything special. Sooner or later you'll realize that. But you know what I would do if I had real pixie dust?"

"What?"

"I'd buy a nice condo for the two of us to live in. One of those fancy places by the waterfront on a high up floor so we could look out over the lake. Way high up in the clouds, where the streets could never touch us anymore. Our own little Cloud Kingdom, imagine that!"

Rumple contemplated the idea for a second, but quickly shook his head. "Wouldn't work, too many stairs for me, if it's that high up."

"There's no stairs in those places silly! All those executives downtown- you really think they have to climb all the way to get to the top of their offices? They use a lift."

Rumple shook his head. He'd never really thought about it before, but he supposed if the mall could have one...

"You'd be fine. And we'd have all the good food and cool clothes and stuff we wanted. I could do hairdressing in the shop on the main floor, too."

"Could I be your helper?"

"Of course!"

"And there'd be a pool for us to swim in! You could, too! It's just like flying in the water, I swear."

"You really think I could swim?"

"Absolutely. It uses different muscles than walking and running. You'd probably be as fast as other kids your age."

"Cool."

"And we'd have maids to clean up after us-" she continued. "But we'd never be mean to them like people were to me when I was a maid. We'd help them too, and we'd all be friends and together we could keep everything all spic and span. There'd be cooks to make good food for us all the time, too when ever we wanted, whatever we wanted."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah," she said.

"And we'd be super duper happy all the time?"

" We'd be so happy we'd never need anything other than each other to make us feel okay. What do you think of that?"

Rumple thought about this. It seemed too good to be true. "Wait, no, what about Dad? Would he be there?"

"Only if he promised to be well behaved. Only if he listened to everything we said. We could make whatever rules we wanted and he'd have to follow them because it would be OUR place, not his."

Rumple thought this sounded like a good idea. When they were done with the birthday feast, Rumple put his toys away in his little backpack and got back into his stroller.

Astrid sang as she pushed the stroller back to the house and Rumple sang along, not caring if anyone else looked at them funny. They were passing through the park, when he noticed the guys in the puffy coats again, slouched behind the electrical shed.

Astird angled Rumple's stroller towards them and began pushing.

"No!" he protested, dragging his good foot along the gound, trying to slow the stroller down. "Astrid! I don't wanna see them!"

"Rumples please-" she pleaded with him like a little kid. "I need-"

"You already got medicine at Shoppers- I saw!" It was true, he'd shrewdly noted the bottles she put in her coat pockets as she emptied out the knapsack of stolen birthday loot. "It's my birthday!" he said, looking up at her, his eyes big and puppy dog like.

"Look, when we get our own place like I told you, I won't have to take medicine anymore, I promise," she said. "But for now- well sometimes grown-ups have to do things kids don't understand."

Rumple looked up at her with narrowed eyes. He wasn't a kid, at least not in his mind anyway and hadn't been one for years. He was pretty sure he understood completely what was going on. He just wondered sometimes if Astrid truly did.


End file.
